The third bell rang--the speculator and the nobleman shook hands and separated; then Pistasch approached the coupé where sat the three conservatives, and asked, "Any room in there for me?"
"Room enough, but we're not sure that we ought to let you come with us, you renegade!" said Oswald, unlatching the coupé door. "Are you too going to Prague for the election?"
"No," said Pistach lazily, "not if I know it, in this heat. I am going to the races--but I shall vote."
"Such indifference, nowadays, is culpable," said Truyn gravely. "This is a serious time."
"Bah! it is all one to me, who goes to the Reichsrath;--moreover, whoever he may be, he exists principally for the benefit of the newspapers," replied Pistasch apathetically.
Only a few years previously, Truyn himself had defined the Reichsrath, as a 'circus for political acrobats'--but his political views were now daily gaining in consistency.
An interest in politics is usually aroused in men of his stamp, when they are between forty and fifty years of age--at a time when the taste for champagne begins to yield to that for claret. Almost all men are thus aroused at two different periods of life; in early youth and in late middle age.
That which ten years before Truyn had ridiculed, was now invested for him with a sacred earnestness.
"We must be true to our convictions for our country's sake!" he exclaimed.
"Has any one really any convictions,--political ones I mean?" asked Pistasch, "my conviction is that it is all up with us, but the country will last as long as I shall--after that I take no interest in it."